Probe: No ethical flaw in commando killing of militant

Amos Harel

Haaretz

Kislev 29, 5765

Three days after the operations of the Naval
Commando in the territories were suspended, the Israel Defense Forces last
night decided that the elite unit should resume its role in hunting down
Palestinian suspects.

An IDF investigation into an incident
involving the commandos has concluded that its actions suffered from
operational, not moral, flaws.

The suspension of operations by the
Shayetet, as the unit is know in Hebrew, followed the fatal shooting of
Mohammed Kamil, a member of Islamic Jihad, when he was unarmed and
injured.

The incident on December 3 in the village of Raba'a near
Jenin in the West Bank raised a public outcry after it became known that
the commandos employed Palestinians in direct contravention of a Supreme
Court decision, to approach the injured Kamil.

Details of the
incident showed that the injured man had surrendered his pistol to the
Palestinian civilians. He was shot and killed from a distance of 40 meters
by commandos who saw him move. The soldiers say they thought he had
another weapon.

The findings of the interim investigation, headed
by Brigadier General Yair Golan, at the request of Chief of Staff Moshe
Ya'alon, head of Central Command Major General Moshe Kaplinsky and Naval
Chief, Major General David Ben-Ba'al Shem Tov, were presented yesterday
and led to the decision to resume the unit's operations in the
territories.

One of the orders issued to the unit is to "refresh
the operational guidelines," as part of dealing with the shortcomings of
their action during the Kamil incident.

The guidelines in question
concern the rules for opening fire, as delineated by the Central Command,
and the court banned use of Palestinian civilians as shields.

The
IDF Spokesman last night said that the interim conclusions suggest that
"there had been no ethical or moral failure in the operations of the naval
commando unit, but there had been operational mistakes."

Military
sources said the incident did not involve the execution of the suspect, as
argued by the human rights group B'Tselem.

A reconstruction of the
incident, says the IDF, shows the soldiers had a legitimate concern that
the suspect was still armed.

The chief of staff expressed his "full
confidence" yesterday in the naval commandos, its officers and men, and
commended their operational competence in fighting terrorism.